Oslo, Norway (Trip pics)

 The first stop our cruise was Oslo, Norway.  What a way to start.  It was beautiful cruising through the Fjords heading up to Oslo.

 This is actually a restaurant. Popular place for wedding receptions.

Once we got into Oslo we went on our shore excursion.  The first stop was the Viking Ship Museum on the Bygdoy Peninsula.  The museum houses 3 enormous ninth-centuryViking ships and several artifacts and treasures that were found in the royal burial mounds in the Oslo fjord.

We took the ship photos from the raised platforms that they built into the museum. 

It was cool to be able to climb up them and see down into the boats. 
Our tour guide is shown in blue in the above picture. 

Our next stop was the Holmenkollen Ski Jump.  It was the site of the 1952 Olympic Ski-jumping competition and was recently rebuilt to host the 2011 Ski jump championships.

I've never been this close to a ski jump before.  It was a lot bigger than I imagined. 

Picture looking up toward the ski jump on the hill from downtown Oslo.

 View of Oslo from the jump

Next we headed to the Vigeland Sculpture Park.  The park was crowded. 
They were having a festival in the park while we were there. 

We were not allowed free time to wander the park, but we did go on a guided walk to see the major sculpture areas and gardens

The Monolith - contains 121 figures and is 17.3 meters high.

It was carved from one single granite block.

The Fountain

Sinnataggen, The little Angry Boy statue - one of the most popular statues along the Bridge.

Kind of funny that all of his sculptures are nudes except for the one he did of himself.

After the tour we went to check out the Akershus Fortress on our own. 

Here are a few more random Oslo pictures

I didn't see these electric cars anywhere but Oslo.  The metal poles in front of the parking spots had electrical outlets for them to plug in the cars.  The picture doesn't show it well but the blue and the white cars are both plugged in. I guess the car is "the Think city"  Only available in Europe right now. 

We had to have our "tourist" moments

They had trolls everywhere

And of course I couldn't leave without one.